Claude Nicollier

  • STS -46 (1992)
  • STS -61 (1993)
  • STS -75 ( 1996)
  • STS- 103 (1999)

Claude Nicollier ( born September 2, 1944 in Vevey, Canton of Vaud ) is a Swiss Military, line and NASA test pilot and astronaut. He was the first and so far only Swiss, who visited the space.

Biography

Due to a car accident at Easter 1969 his career seemed to have found a militia fighter pilot in the Swiss Air Force to an end. As Nicollier saw the first moon landing on July 21, 1969, at the television, he did everything he could to be able to fly again. A year later, he sat back in the cockpit, took in Geneva studying astrophysics in attack and had trained as a commercial pilot. After completion of this training, he flew from 1974, a DC-9 Swissair.

From 1976 he worked as a scientist at ESA in Noordwijk, where he competed as an astronaut and was selected in December 1977 for the first ESA astronaut group.

The asteroid ( 14826 ) Nicollier is named after him.

Space travel

As part of a cooperative program of the ESA with NASA Claude Nicollier flew four times with four different space shuttles into space.

His first assignment was the mission STS -61- C designed for mission STS -51- H in November 1985 or after its cancellation in October 1986, the flight was canceled after the Challenger disaster.

From 31 July to August 8, 1992 circled Nicollier aboard Space Shuttle Atlantis during the STS -46 mission in eight days, 136 times the Earth, including on August 7, with its marked for him the former Swiss Federal Councillor Adolf Ogi quip has become " of joy, Monsieur Nicollier » congratulated.

From 2 to December 13, 1993 aboard the Endeavour STS- 61, and from February 22 to March 9, 1996 aboard the Columbia STS -75 was followed by other flights. The last flight from 19 to 27 December 1999 the Discovery STS -103 he proved himself along with the rest of the crew as a service expert with the Hubble Space Telescope. He undertook his first spacewalk and installed new instruments on Hubble. Even before that, Nicollier had made especially with his skill in the operation of the manipulator arm of the shuttle a name. During his service he was awarded several times, with the NASA Distinguished Service Medal (2001) and four times with the NASA Space Flight Medal ( 1992, 1993, 1996, 1999 ).

Nicollier is the first European with four space flights. Ironically, all flights missions with low inclination, so that Nicollier never flew over Switzerland.

From 2000 to 2007 he worked for the Office of NASA astronauts in the Department of outboard inserts.

Activities after the spaceman career

In 2004 Nicollier to a teaching position at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. In March 2007, he left the ESA, after he had taken a full professor at the EPFL.

2005 Nicollier was elected to the Board of Directors of the watch company Swatch Group. As long as he was an astronaut by ESA and NASA, he received no director's fees. Since June 2007, he is also Chairman of the Research and Development Center CSEM and since 2009 head of flight tests of Solar Impulse.

Project " Faux Dufaux »

On August 28, 2010 Claude Nicollier should repeat the aeronautical pioneer of the brothers Henri and Armand Dufaux and fly over Lake Geneva along the historic route of 1910. The working group " Faux Dufaux " built for the 100th anniversary of the flight, the certificate issued in the Museum of Transport Switzerland " Dufaux 4», the oldest Swiss aircraft, after. Individuals, lecturers, trainees and students - - On the project, a total of 3000 workers involved from EPFL, West Swiss universities and vocational schools, with a budget of 4.7 million Swiss francs. However, the Swiss Federal Office for Civil Aviation ( FOCA) previously refused admission to the replica and demanded the redesign of essential parts. Nicollier stated in September 2011, she intends to use his good relations with the FOCA to still to help the Dufaux replica to start.

Private

Nicollier has been a widow since the end of 2007; he has two children. In addition to his experiences outside the Earth's atmosphere, he describes an ascent of the Matterhorn with his then 14- year-old daughter in 1992 as a highlight of his life.

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